Marie Louise Fuller was born on January 15, 1862, in Fullersburg, Illinois, on a remote farm conveniently linked to Chicago by a newly-constructed plank road.

Her early exposure to the arts came through her parents - her father was a skilled fiddler and dance caller, while her mother had aspired to be an opera singer before marriage.

[4] Fuller's career as a child performer progressed with little formal training and much variety, as she experimented with dramatic reading, singing, and dance.

[3] From 1881 to 1889, Fuller performed in western melodramas and musical burlettas in New York City and the Midwest, with notable roles in "Davy Crockett" (1882) and "Twenty Days, or Buffalo Bill's Pledge" (1883).

Following this setback, Fuller's fortunes changed when she secured a role as an understudy at London's Gaiety Theatre, known for its skirt dances.

In 1889, Fuller visited the Paris Exposition Universelle, where she was particularly impressed by the Palais d'électricité and the illuminated fountains of the Champs de Mars, which later influenced her innovative use of lighting in her performances.

[citation needed] By 1891, Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design, and created the Serpentine Dance.

[7] After much difficulty finding someone willing to produce her work when she was primarily known as an actress, she was finally hired to perform her piece between acts of a comedy entitled Uncle Celestine, and received rave reviews.

Fuller achieved critical success with her Serpentine performances at the Casino and—when a dispute with Aronson forced her to switch venues—at the Madison Square Theatre.

In 1892, she filed a lawsuit against imitator Minnie Renwood Bemis in an attempt to secure intellectual property rights for her Serpentine Dance.

[10] The judge stated: "A stage dance illustrating the poetry of motion by a series of graceful movements, combined with an attractive arrangement of drapery, lights and shadows, but telling no story, portraying no character and depicting no emotion, is not a 'dramatic composition' within the meaning of the Copyright Act.

"[10] The precedent set by Fuller's case remained in place until the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, which explicitly extended protection to nondramatic choreographic works.

[13][14] Fuller's pursuit of copyright protection was part of a broader struggle for artistic recognition and control over her work in a male-dominated theatrical industry.

Her attempts to protect her performing body from becoming fully open to capital by asserting property rights over her image and choreography marked a complex negotiation between her status as artist and commodity.

[3] Fuller began adapting and expanding her costume and lighting, so that they became the principal element in her performance—perhaps even more important than the actual choreography, especially as the length of the skirt was increased and became the central focus, while the body became mostly hidden within the depths of the fabric.

[15] The choreography of the Serpentine Dance was filmed by multiple early filmmakers, including Auguste and Louis Lumière, but it is unclear whether the recordings depict Fuller herself.

"[25] Fuller's pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artists and scientists, including Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, François-Raoul Larche, Henri-Pierre Roché, Auguste Rodin, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Franz von Stuck, Maurice Denis, Thomas Theodor Heine, Paul-Léon Jazet, Koloman Moser, Demétre Chiparus, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marie Curie.

[36] With Queen Marie and American businessman Samuel Hill, Fuller helped found the Maryhill Museum of Art in rural Washington state, which has permanent exhibits about her career.

[37] Fuller occasionally returned to America to stage performances by her students, the "Fullerets" or Muses, but spent the end of her life in Paris.

[47] The philosopher Jacques Rancière devoted a chapter of Aisthesis, his history of modern aesthetics, to Fuller's 1893 performances in Paris, which he considers emblematic of Art Nouveau in their attempt to link artistic and technological invention.

[48] Giovanni Lista compiled a 680-page book of Fuller-inspired art work and texts in Loïe Fuller, Danseuse de la Belle Epoque in 1994.

[49] In the 1980s, Munich dancer Brygida Ochaim[50] revived Fuller's dances and techniques, also appearing in the Claude Chabrol film The Swindler.